July 2017 In the News Archive | Emory University School of Law

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby quoted Emory Law Senior Lecturer Mark Goldfeder's new book in a column on the growth of polygamy. "This is the first book that explains not only why the legalization of plural marriage may be on the horizon in America but also why the idea is not really as radical as you might at first glance think; why the legal arguments against it are surprisingly weak; and how ... it would not actually be that difficult to accommodate," Goldfeder's book begins.

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 4-2 in Ziglar v. Abbasi--a case brought by detainees in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, alleging grave mistreatment at the hands of federal executive branch officials. "Here, oddly, four justices--what I have called a 'minority majority"--is technically enough to constitute a majority," Emory Law Professor Jonathan Nash writes in a column for The Hill. He argues such opinions should receive limited precedential effect.

The future of a program that protects young immigrants from deportation is uncertain, as some Trump administration officials say Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, will likely not stand up in the courts, WABE reports. Many states sued the Obama administration over the program, but the Supreme Court deadlocked on the issue. Emory Law Professor Polly Price said while the Supreme Court now has nine justices, it's hard to predict how they would rule. "It's not clear yet how they would have ruled if they¿d been presented with DACA itself," she said.

Senior Lecturer Mark Goldfeder is among those singled out by the Atlanta Jewish Times this year for remarkable achievement at a young age. He is the Spruill Family Senior Fellow at Emory's Center for the Study of Law and Religion and director of Restoring Religious Freedom: Education, Outreach and Good Citizenship.

After months of denial by the Trump team about communication with Russia during the 2016 election, Donald Trump Jr. confirmed he met with a Russian lawyer in hopes of receiving damaging information on Hillary Clinton, Politifact reports. Was it illegal? It's possible a court could find that "information" satisfies the legal requirement if it's considered valuable to a campaign. "Contributions definitely do not need to be in the form of cash to constitute a thing of value," said Emory Law Professor Michael Kang. "However, it also needs to be said that this is an unusual situation quite unlike the usual context for an illegal foreign contribution, typically in the form of money rather than information."

A lawsuit that could have implications for how the government takes private property is being weighed by the Georgia Supreme Court, and the case between a Marietta property owner and the city will determine whether protections laid out in the state's 2006 Landowner's Bill of Rights statute are mandatory. The city argues they are not. "It is an interesting issue, about whether these rules are simply aspirational guidelines that municipalities should follow versus actual rules," said Emory Law Professor Timothy Holbrook. "What's the point of having this Bill of Rights if municipalities are free to ignore it?"

"The Advocate Health Care Network opinion was authored by Justice Elena Kagan, an appointee of President Barack Obama," Emory Law Professor Jonathan Nash writes for The Hill. "While Kagan has exhibited a penchant for textualism over the years, this opinion is a tour de force in textualist interpretive technique."